SCEPA economists are working on the prospects for a more progressive economic order to emerge from the shock of the recession. They have published papers and documents that place current events in a longer-term context as well as policy proposals to deal with short-term concerns. They are also documenting the emerging discussion of how the discipline of economics is reacting to the Great Recession and the questioning of conventional economic analysis.​

Lance Taylor, a SCEPA Faculty Fellow, presents an overview of his new book, Maynard’s Revenge, in a Google Tech Talk.

The book, published this November by Harvard University Press, is a timely analysis of mainstream macroeconomics, posing the need for a more useful and realistic economic analysis that can provide a better understanding of the ongoing global financial and economic crisis.​

The government spends $143 billion through tax breaks in an effort to expand pension coverage and security. Yet, over half of the American workforce does not have a pension. Retirement insecurity hurts business plans, workers’ lives and retiree well-being. Reform is needed.

SCEPA’s Guaranteeing Retirement Income Project, sponsored by the Rockefeller Foundation and in collaboration with Demos and the Economic Policy Institute, has a plan to guarantee safe and secure retirement income for all Americans.​

Chris Christie and his proposal to raise the retirement age are officially part of the 2016 presidential campaign. While policies like this are debated on the campaign trail, the labor market for older workers needs to be considered.

Today's job report shows the unemployment rate for black older workers is nearly double that of Whites (3.3% for Whites and 5.8% for Blacks). This shows the perseverance of racial disparities in the labor market for older workers despite lower overall unemployment levels over the last year.

Not only is finding work more difficult for non-White older workers, so is saving for retirement if and when employed. For people of color nearing retirement who are in the bottom 50% of the income distribution – those families earning less than $60,000 a year – only 47% of Blacks have retirement coverage at work, 30% of Hispanics/Latinos and 37% for other racial and ethnic groups, including Asians.1

SCEPA has documented how this one-two punch of joblessness coupled with age decreases older workers' bargaining power, further diminishing their ability to save for retirement even if they do find work.

For workers over 55, the labor market – and therefore raising the retirement age - is not a solution. Instead, older workers need access to a strengthened Social Security program and supplemental policy innovations like Guaranteed Retirement Accounts (GRAs).

1For the middle 40% ($60,000 - $187,000), non-coverage by race are: 9% for Whites, 10% for Blacks, 22% for Hispanics, and 18% for other. For the top 10%: 3% for Whites, 0% for Blacks, 45% for Hispanics, and 24% for other.

Aleksandr Gevorkyan, Professor of Economics at St. John's University and New School PhD, joined with Otaviano Canuto from the World Bank to call for the creation of a Migration Development Bank (MDB).

With 250 million migrants in 2015, the authors cite the need for "an internationally recognized and functional institutional financial framework that would systematize the positive economic impacts of migration and remittances for developing countries while smoothing capital and labor flows."

Using Eastern Europe and the Former Soviet Union as case studies, they show how an MDB would provide an institutional framework for remittances and build the possibility for development in migrants' home countries.

While May's stronger job growth is welcome, continuing low inflation and annual wage growth below 2.5% don't present any macroeconomic threats that warrant driving up interest rates. But the Fed, like many economic policymakers, seems to be operating in a "new normal" where an unemployment rate of 5.5% is considered full employment. That is not a world where most workers and families will make any significant economic progress.

The May employment report shows job creation numbers bounced back with a gain of 280,000. And an upward revision of the numbers for the previous two months added 32,000 jobs, pushing the three-month rolling average to 207,000 new jobs per month. The unemployment rate ticked up by a probably meaningless one-tenth of a percent, to 5.5%. The big jump in employment has many observers predicting a Federal Reserve interest rate increase sooner rather than later.

But even with these job gains, we still are not seeing significant labor market pressures.